Commentary on Lectionary for October 31, 2010

Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 32:1-7; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10

At our moving Taize service this month, a reading from James 5:16 counseled us to “confess [our] sins to one another so that [we] may be healed.” We have to load this advice up with complications, because we have issues of trust and confidentiality; people may gossip (“Do you know what Joe DID when he was younger?”); and some relationships will not survive confessions of infidelity and betrayal. But if you do find someone who knows all your sins and still accepts and loves you, it is a marvelous thing, and you can almost feel the healing.

Only once in my life was I in the exactly the right place in front of a grove of pine trees and the cones were at just the right state of ripeness so that when the sun came out, I could hear them popping open…That’s what I imagine the healing is like.

In the reading from Isaiah today, the prophet is brutal in detailing God’s disgust at Judah’s hypocrisy at observing rituals and festivals while acting unjustly, especially toward the wronged, the widows, and the orphans. Yet after telling the Israelites “Though you pray the more, I will not listen,” God promises through His prophet: “Let us set things right…Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow…” --Interesting choice of words. Not: “IF you set things right, THEN I’ll forgive your sins…” More like a collaborative effort: You’ll need my help to set things right; or I’ll help you set things right.

In 2 Thessalonians 1:11, Paul may be expressing this same promise of help from God when he prays that “our God may make you worthy of his call.”

The Psalmist sings the joy of acknowledging one’s sins and experiencing the great serenity of God’s forgiveness. God is portrayed as One Who reaches into our stress, our floods of distress, and shows us how to get out of it and to find shelter in Him.

Even in next week’s selection from Luke, where the Sadducees present Jesus with a far-fetched problem involving seven brothers marrying the same woman and then dying, Jesus speaks of a different reality, of a realm to which prayer can take us, of a shelter that has no weak walls, and of a life that knows no end. And that life, by implication, is where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reside and where our departed dear ones are, too.